The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
In data center applications there is a need to be able to inventory new components that will be installed in a data center, as well as to quickly and easily identify components that may be mounted in an equipment rack, or even components that may be free-standing components (e.g., standalone servers), after they have been installed in a data center. In the latter instance, being able to reliably identify a component installed in the data center (either in a rack or as a free-standing component) can be important when obtaining status or configuration information concerning the component.
Presently one method of inventorying data center components is manually entering component information, for example entering an identification number, serial number or other identifier, using a keyboard associated with a computer, into a database. The computer then records the entered identification (ID) information in a suitable data store. If information concerning a specific component in use in a data center needs to be obtained, then the user typically may be required to manually enter an ID number to pull up the specifications of the component in question. Obviously, in either scenario, if the user enters an incorrect ID number, whether when creating an inventory of data center items or when looking up the technical specifications on a certain data center item, this can potentially lead to confusion and time consuming troubleshooting.
Still other factors affecting the management of data center environments is the sheer number of items of equipment that are now being located in large and very large data center environments. In some very large scale environments, the data center environment may be a room or collection of rooms having hundreds or more rows of equipment. Each row of equipment may have dozens, or possibly even hundreds, of items of equipment, ranging from servers, Power Distribution Units (PDUs), network switches, memory storage devices, and routers, to numerous types of sensors and other monitoring devices for monitoring real time operation of such devices, as well as power consumption (at the equipment/rack/row levels), cooling usage (i.e., operation of Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) Units), humidity monitoring, etc. The modern data center management system is able to generate alarms, alerts, and event “notifications”, in real time, whenever predetermined conditions or events occur that affect operating conditions within the data center (or a specific sub area thereof) or which affect individual items of equipment in the data center. In the event of any one of these alarms, alerts, or event notifications, it may become necessary or advisable for a data center worker to promptly inspect the affected area of the data center or the affected item of equipment. In many data centers, especially very large data centers having hundreds or thousands of pieces of equipment spread out over dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of rows of equipment, and sometimes in multiple rooms, just locating the equipment item can be challenging.
Often the data center worker may be required to monitor the data center environment from a predetermined location, and then when an alarm, alert, or event notification is generated, he/she must physically write down information on the location of the affected piece of equipment. The worker may then begin to walk through the numerous aisles of the data center to visually locate the affected piece of equipment. Visually locating the affected piece of equipment can be challenging because the racks in the data center environment can look almost identical, with the only distinguishing features often being some ID labels on the frame work of each rack. Still further, specific components within the rack often look almost identical once mounted in an equipment rack, with the only identifying information being present on the name plate of the equipment. So even if the data center worker has the correct information on the specific row/rack from which an equipment alarm/alert/notification has been generated, just locating the specific equipment item can often be time consuming and highly visually challenging. And if the data center worker is walking out and about within the data center, he/she may be required to return to the predetermined control center when notified of an alarm/alert/notification condition (such as by a cellular call or pager notification) in order to obtain the detailed information necessary to locate the affected piece of equipment. Only then can the worker set back out to walk through the data center environment to locate and inspect the affected area or specific piece of equipment.